Android users targeted in cyber attack and told to delete these apps immediately

Cybercriminals are targeting Android devices once more in a bid to tric users into handing over their personal and financial information. In this latest attack, users are being warned to delete infected apps immediately. The current threat from hackers seeking to boost their profits involves a sophisticated form of advertising fraud.

Security specialists from the team said: "HUMAN's Satori Threat Intelligence and Research Team has uncovered and disrupted a sophisticated ad fraud and click fraud operation dubbed SlopAds..

"The threat actors behind SlopAds operate a collection of 224 apps and growing, collectively downloaded from Google Play more than 38 million times across 228 countries and territories.

"These apps deliver their fraud payload using steganography and create hidden WebViews to navigate to threat actor-owned cashout sites, generating fraudulent ad impressions and clicks. The threat actors' infrastructure and many of the apps an AI theme, contributing to the name of the operation."

Google has successfully removed all the offending apps, ensuring no new users will fall victim to ad fraud.

If you're concerned that you've installed one of the apps harbouring the SlopAds bug, rest assured that the security team will alert all affected users with a warning and prompt to uninstall the problematic apps.

To safeguard against future attacks, Android users are being urged to activate Google's Play Protect feature in the app store.

This tool will alert users to potentially corrupted apps before they install them, while also blocking any future apps exhibiting behaviour associated with SlopAds.

Ad fraud isn't just detrimental to device users, but also to trusted advertisers and developers as hackers manipulate the network to allow their infested ads.

Google clarifies: "Ad interactions generated for the purpose of tricking an ad network into believing traffic is from authentic user interest is ad fraud, which is a form of invalid traffic.

"Ad fraud may be the byproduct of developers implementing ads in disallowed ways, such as showing hidden ads, automatically clicking ads, altering or modifying information and otherwise leveraging non-human actions (spiders, bots, etc.) or human activity designed to produce invalid ad traffic.

"Invalid traffic and ad fraud is harmful to advertisers, developers, and users, and leads to long-term loss of trust in the mobile Ads ecosystem."

Android users are advised to act swiftly and delete any app flagged as infected to safeguard their device.